Many scenarios envisage a future UK energy system with a higher proportion of distributed energy, more diverse businesses and more participative democratic control (Ofgem 2017).
Devolved government in the UK is associated with some divergence in policies to support local energy. This provides a ‘natural experiment’ to help understand how local and regional systems will evolve, what their impacts will be, and the costs and benefits for the whole system.
The UK Clean Growth Strategy emphasises the role of markets in selecting measures to meet emissions targets, including discovery of market value of any local or regional systems. In Scottish policy however more emphasis is given to sectoral planning, including prioritisation of local energy developments.
This project will study the institutions used to build technical, financial and governance capacities in different UK regions, including cross sector collaboration. The research will look at case studies of regional and local energy system planning and development, selected to maximise inter-disciplinary insights and knowledge by working closely with the Economic & industrial transitions and Modelling synergies and tensions between transitions projects.
In sum, this project will investigate the interactions between the different policy frameworks across the UK and the local/regional energy business models, partnerships and funding mechanisms in use.
